Filmmakers at Risk

In Focus: Filmmakers at Risk

How much risk is it worth taking to make a film? In five films we meet those who literally exposed themselves to high personal and political dangers to realise their films and share their stories with us.

We find ourselves in the midst of street battles in Kinshasa (Kinshasa Makambo), violent protests in Kashmir (After Prayers) and experience the bombing of Damascus through the lens of the camera of three young men (Daraya – A Library under Bombs). With the Oscar nominated film Of Fathers and Sons we immerse ourselves in the life of a radical Islamist family and in the world premiere of Dialogue we accompany a Kurdish filmmaker and his mother on their way into the Syrian civil war in search of the missing brother and Son. But it is not the already known images of these conflicts that leave us astonished, but the deeply human stories, which we get to know thanks to the high personal commitment of the filmmakers.